IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Recently I did the Tryker harvesting rite and having already declared alliance to the Kami traveling in the lakes was exhausting. I love the lake regions, they are beautiful, but I left the lakes and spent a lot of play in land filled areas coming back and having to swim everywhere was a bit annoying. Out of this experience a conversation was started about why the Trykers haven’t invented boats or water vehicles to move around in the lakes. Anything that can speed up the process I think is a good idea. Then an idea popped! I was asked to share it on the forum and maybe you guys will like it and the Dev. can figure out a way to tweak the concept and possibly add it to the game.

Dappers are abundant on atys and basically the ways to waste them is at the jackpot wheel and OP wars. My suggestion is to use a feature already in game to help waste more dappers and at the same time give us temporary commuting services. We already use mounts to travel around, mostly in the regions we are in, or they are kept in the stables and use only for storage. We can take them with us everywhere but let’s be real we don’t because we know it is a pain to do so. In other game mounts are like magical unicorns with wings that appear out of our *cough* anytime we want to travel from one place to another. Don’t get me wrong I’m glad ryzom is more unique than anything out there and some features are more realistic than most games. Taking this in consideration my proposal is renting a mektoub mount – similar to what we do in RL when we travel to new places away from home we rent a vehicle at the local car rental.

Rent a Mount, what is it? Well imagine arriving at Fairhaven, you are away from your homeland and you are doing some odd jobs with the locals and they send you to areas that will take days to reach. Not only that they have you going back and forth several times and you are really tired of doing it by foot. You didn’t bring your mount with you but you hear the Groom will rent you a mount if you have the dappers. You speak to the stable boy and he asked you what you want?

Your options: (the better the constitution the more they cost)
-A rapid mount with feeble constitution
-A rapid mount with average constitution
-A rapid mount with above average constitution
-A rapid mount with excellent constitution

You choose the one you can afford even though you feel he is charging you more than the locals. The mount looks just like the other mounts of the region, nothing special about it. The Groom gives you some instructions; you can have the mount for 1 hour and you can only feed it a type of fruit (which you can only buy from him). He goes on to tell you the mount has but the one bag pack where you can keep the fruits and if you forget to feed it will return to the stable on its own. Furthermore they won’t go anywhere near teleports, they are afraid of them, so don’t even try going through one with them or you will find yourself on your *cough* and without a mount.

Basically the rentable mounts will have some restrictions:

They can only be used for a short amount of time.
They can’t be taken out from one region to the other (lakes to forest, desert to jungle, region to prime roots, etc..)
They can’t be used for storage space.
They only eat a type of fruit which you can only buy with the stable boy. (Works like bale)
The rent cost range according to your standing fame with the region and by the mount’s constitution.
And if the mount dies in your care you are penalized a large sum of dappers and can't rent another for a period of time.

There you have it, a rent-a-mount idea to help make the dreary travels in some areas more fun, faster but by no means safer. Plus the idea helps sink some dappers into something useful and I think will also make mounts more useful than they already are. Feel free to make suggestions and add your opinion.

Why leave it up to devs?
I forgot what event it was but think it was Fitis that set up a mount renting service for ppl during an event some time/years (probably) ago. She made alot of alts with all a mount then traded them all over the map with ppl needing a mount for the event runs.
Think she did it for free but if there is enough ppl asking for the service I'm sure somebody can do it again and ask dapper for it, if nobody is intrested in doing it themself why would the dev then put time in it for some bobs to use it once or twice until they got all tp's.

I like both Tutti's suggestion (love it in fact) and Suboxide's entrepreneurial spirit!

+1

Great Idea. Anyone who doesn't have a mount really ought to try it (it's FUN). Plus the whole thing about rocking up to the nearest town and renting a mount from the Stables for the afternoon really appeals. An hour isn't long enough - maybe a sliding scale of rental times or maybe you just pay when you take it back to the Stable. This would work best if you could take the mount back to ANY Stables, not necessarily the one you rented it from. Any charges should at least cover the cost of food (inc. spare bundles) for the mount.

I love the idea of a player-run service and I can see how it would work, but it needs to be available 24/7 and nobody is on all the time. Maybe Guilds could run a set (pack?) of rentable mounts for anyone who asks.

This could be expanded to Packers too, but if they are made available to unsubbed players it might take away the need to subscribe (which would be a bad thing).

BTW there was a discussion about Aquatic Mounts and other fish in the 'Ideas for Ryzom' section here: http://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/?page=topic/view/12764/1#1